Customer Reviews

Ain't It Dead Yet

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Top ten reasons why this is one of my favorite Skinny Puppy CD's. 10) It's sort of a greatest hits collection from the peak of their touring career. 9) It's unique in the fact that a band who relies on studio tricks has pulled off a really great live album. 8) cEvin Key's keyboard performance is more melodic and personal. 7) Assimilate lost it's out of place dance feel. 6) A great live performance of Addiction nearly equal to the original which is saying a lot because the original is a technological masterpiece. 5) Cool improvisation by Goettel. 4) Ogre's voice is mixed down. 3) Chainsaw and First Aid sound better than studio versions. 2) Great synth programming. And the number one reason why this is one of my favorites... It's fun to listen to and I bet the band had fun performing it. One final note, the CD I bought from Amazon.com had separate tracking for each song verses one big track.

This CD is a nearly flawless recording of a show from Skinny Puppy's 1987 'Cleanse, Fold, and Manipulate' tour. As such, the sound quality is terrific and actually quite well mixed. I assume this was recorded straight off the soundboard, because there is little to no noise from the audience during the songs, but I could be wrong.

Some have been tempted to recommend this as a 'greatest hits' style compilation as well as a great concert document, because this contains many of the band's best tracks from their first four albums. I'd have to say that's a bit misleading, however. These are very harsh and aggressive versions of songs that were already somewhat harsh to begin with and that may turn off some who are just starting to appreciate the band's novel approach to music. While not drastically different in their concert form, everything is quite a bit more dense and chaotic here. Skinny Puppy turned up to 11.

Ogre's words are often even more garbled with distortion and there are many more layers applied to the familiar beats and rhythms Puppy provided on studio recordings. It's all very aggressive, heavy stuff. Dancey tracks like "Assimilate" are here presented with bleak intensity; sharpening the despair in the lyrics and reducing the club-friendly polish. "Anger" was a somewhat murky and subdued affair on 'Cleanse, Fold, and Manipulate,' but here it is pounding and ferocious. "Dig It" loses its electronic sheen and turns messy, drenched with guitar feedback. "One Time, One Place" features some gorgeous synth playing from Dwayne Goettel between squealing electronic punctuations. This concert performance is beautiful in an ugly way. It's powerful, arresting at times and I believe this gives us Skinny Puppy at their best. It's also almost almost too punishing and stark, sometimes unnervingly so. I like to listen to this loud, but usually make sure no one else is around first. Music this savage isn't very conducive to social interaction or peaceful cohabitation.

For me, this sort of signifies the end of Skinny Puppy's early (and best) period. Some very good work followed this, but when their next studio album arrived something seemed different. 'Ain't it dead yet?' shows us the period when the band were at their peak. They still enjoyed what they were doing, still got along and were consistently refining their art and growing as musicians. Easy five stars for this.

i think this album should be one of the first ones that someone gets after too dark park. it is an amazing cd capturing puppy live, in a truly emotional and gripping and heavy form. assimliate is amazing.. this song is my favorite of all time, with its beautiful synth work at the chorus and its ominous bass during the verse. ogre's distorted vocals are highly effective and infectious... and the samples and keyboards done through the middle of the song when ogre is taking a break, sound simply chilling and it really grabs hold of your soul. the rest of the songs are likley all more intense and in some cases better versions than the orginal songs like addiction and first aid, anger... this cd is my favorite of all time, and has many of puppy's excellent songs on it. cant go wrong.. BUT make sure u get the version which on the tracklisting lists "one time one place" instead of the one that lists "god's gift maggot" or else you'll be getting a cd that is all one ONE track instead of seperate tracks.

I said it, and I mean it. This is their best. Even though there aren't any new songs on here, the way that it is put together... with all the songs flowing beautifully into eachother, makes this CD a better experience than any other Puppy album. If you like Skinny Puppy I would hope that this CD is in your collection, or at the top of your shopping list.

Actually the soundtrack from the concert video release by the same name, it does this band justice when you take into account that Skinny Puppy's sound relies so heavily on studio wizardy. Granted, a great deal of the musical content is canned, the live elements, like precussion and guitars add nicely to the original songs, "Dig It" especially sounds great with the huge live guitar. The credit really goes to vocalist Nivek Ogre for pulling it all together. He delivers a freakish nightmare of a performance that lives up to the heavily edited vocals from the album versions of the songs. Oddly compelling are the bits between songs where he is trying to communicate from behind the thick wall of reverb and distortion on his vocals, like somekind of unintelligable psychotic freak. One slightly annoying thing about this cd is that it is recorded as one long track with no way to skip to particular songs, I guess the intention being that you have to listen to the whole thing. I would love to see a DVD release of the video version of this album, because as good as the cd sounds, seeing Skinny Puppy do their weird performance art style live show adds much more to the experiance.

This is one of my favorite Skinny Puppy Cds. Hearing Skinny Puppy live really brings out the vitality of their music. "The Choke", "Addiction", and "Deep Down Trauma Hounds" are all particularly good on this album. Overall excellent, and very hard to stop listening to.

This is the first Puppy Cd I ever heard, and this is what got me addicted to them. After this Cd, I went out and bought all the Puppy Cds. Every song on here is great, even all the Brap. If you ever get a chance to buy the actual video recording of this perfomance, buy it, its insane. You thought Manson was crazy on stage, think again, Ogre is the greatest.

First off it's worth noting that the formentioned single track version of the album (everything on one track rather than ?11? seperate tracks hasn't been available since about 98. If you buy this you will almost certainly be getting a cd with each song having it's own track.

Not only vastly superioir to the doomsday live cd released years later, but one of the bands best albums period. This disc features most of the bands truly mentionable tracks up through the point of it's release. Instead of the dancy clubish versions written mostly before goettel came on board these are filled with spectacular random skitterings of noise in strange places. Not just brappage between the songs, but all through them! Everything a puppy fan would expect.

It's impossable to say how much tape loop was used here, but there are enough differences between these and the album versions to be sure key and goettel both had their hands full.

This is one of the best three or four skinny puppy albums ever released imho. if you're curious, do your self a favor and pick it up.